Does anyone REALLY feel in the Christmas Spirit this year?
I mean we are all doing what we should be doing. We are all flocking to the stores to buy overpriced gifts for family members.
We are all saying the right things.
You know the Happy Holidays. Merry Christmas and the like.
We are even going through the motions of doing something nice for someone, be it in the coffee line or the gas station or wherever.
But while we are saying the right things---are we believing the right things?
That is a very different question.
For one week out of the year everyone will be nice to each other and then come January 1st or second they will go back to the way we all were---whatever that was.
When he was President, Ronald Reagan would address the nation. It was on this date in 1981 that he said:
"A few months before he took up residence in this house, one of my predecessors, John Kennedy, tried to sum up the temper of the times with a quote from an author closely tied to Christmas, Charles Dickens. We were living, he said, in the best of times and the worst of times. Well, in some ways that's even more true today. The world is full of peril, as well as promise. Too many of its people, even now, live in the shadow of want and tyranny."
Wouldn't it be nice if we could all take the "spirit" of the holidays---the holiday of whatever you choose to celebrate---and make it a part of our lives everyday---rather than just a day or a week out of the year?
If we did it for just one day---and then another after that---and another after that, we would have something.
Merry Christmas Everyone.
Happy Hanukkah
Happy Kwanzaa (December 26th).
(Picture with thanks---Carl Stevens/WBZ NewsRadio)